Optically-Processed Routing Control for Fast Packet Switches

摘要

It is well known that optical fibers possess enormous transmission bandwidthcapacity (on the order of 10-20 THz). However, due to the limitations of electronic circuit bandwidths at the transmit and receive nodes, in order to fully utilize this bandwidth, a shared medium protocol must be employed. Optical shared medium protocols involve multiplexing techniques, such as time, wavelength, or space division or subcarrier multiplexing. In time division multiplexing, high speed routing and contention resolution are required. Such needs point to the development of optical gating devices to achieve this functionality. This work describes the requirements and implementation of new architectures and components for all optical interconnects approaching these terahertz bandwidth capacities. keywords: Optical fibers, Interconnects, Time division multiplex, Demultiplex, Architecture, Packet switch, Routing, Contention, deflection routing.